Super Bowl XLIX Champions, the New England Patriots fell under heavy fire Wednesday following the conclusion of the NFL commissioned Wells Report investigating the notorious case of under inflated footballs that has come to be known as Deflate Gate.
The 139-page report after three months of gathering information, has came to the same conclusion that the rest of America came to back in February, the Patriots cheated their way to a Super Bowl ring, and America’s beloved quarterback Tom Brady was in on it.
Brady throws footballs for a living, anyone who wants to argue that he was unaware of the sudden softness of his balls can go take a hike to CSU.
According to the Well Report, three New England Patriots personnel were named in having a direct hand or knowledge of the ball deflation, Jim McNally, the Patriots Locker Room Attendant, John Jastremski Equipment Assistant and Tom Brady. “Based on the evidence, it also is our view that it is more probable than not that Tom Brady was at least generally aware of the inappropriate activities of McNally and Jastremski involving the release of air from Patriots game balls,” the Wells report concluded in page two of their report.
Among the evidence damning the Patriots onto the football wall of shame are uncovered phone calls between Brady and the equipment assistant after word of the deflated balls got out, multiple text messages between the equipment assistant and a part-time employee regarding cash, free shoes and autographs.
What the Wells Report boils down to is that previous claims that Brady and the Patriots had no knowledge about the violation were crap. The Patriots cheated. Undisputed champions? I beg to differ. The Indianapolis Colts knew in January that they were cheated, and now everyone else does too.
In the AFC Championship game against the Colts Tom Brady threw 35 passes and completed 23 of them for a 66 percent completion rate, a two percent jump from his season average and a six percent increase from the previous year.
Brady padding his completion rate with deflated balls is the equivalent to Red Sox pitcher Clay Buchholz throwing a spitball to throw off the batter it’s illegal.
According to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell (booing), Troy Vincent, the league’s executive vice president of football operations, will decide on possible penalties and if the game-day process for delivering footballs to the field needs to be changed. As for Brady, circumstantial evidence is unlikely to yield any promising results in discipline.
Although things look pretty sour for Brady and the New England Patriot, fret not New England fans, they sleep well with their Super Bowl rings, however undeserved they may be.
